Pennsylvania authorities investigate theft of $40000 worth of organic eggs
A significant theft of 100,000 organic eggs valued at $40,000 occurred in Pennsylvania, coinciding with soaring wholesale egg prices due to an avian flu outbreak.
About $40,000 worth of eggs were taken from a trailer belonging to Pete and Gerry's Organics, police said. U.S. wholesale egg prices are at a record high.
A daring heist in Pennsylvania has left authorities shell-shocked: 100,000 organic eggs were stolen from a facility in Greencastle, just north of the Maryland border.
The egg heist, worth approximately $40,000, comes at a time of record-high wholesale egg prices in the country and reports of shortages.
Thieves stole the eggs from a distribution trailer belonging to Pete and Gerry's Organics on Saturday around 8:40 p.m., according to a police report. The matter is under investigation, Megan Frazer, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania State Police, said in an email late Wednesday, adding that police have asked residents to contact them with leads.
A theft of this magnitude involving food is "extremely rare," she wrote.
Pete and Gerry's Organics, which began as a home farm in New Hampshire, works with more than 200 family-owned farms across New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, according to its website. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case has drawn national attention, given the jump in retail egg prices, driven by an outbreak of avian flu.
According to food market research firm Expana, the wholesale price for a dozen Midwest Large eggs recently reached $7.76, a sharp rise from about $1.50 in early January 2022, before the outbreak began.
Retail consumers are feeling the pinch, too. Between December 2023 and December 2024, the average retail egg price increased by 37 percent, consumer price index data shows.
And this week, Waffle House introduced a 50-cent surcharge per egg. "While we hope these price fluctuations will be short-lived we cannot predict how long this shortage will last," the company said in a statement.
About 110 million egg-laying hens have died or been culled in a bid to prevent the avian flu from spreading during the outbreak, which was first detected in 2022.
It will take a while before hens can be replaced and for chicks to reach maturity and start producing eggs. Prices were unlikely to come down before May, experts told The Washington Post this week. Spring could bring fresh exposure to the virus through migratory birds.
Though police have not had a breakthrough in cracking the Pennsylvania case, the puns just keep hatching.
One outlet said the case required "some hard-boiled detective work." Another said it appeared to be "one rotten egg shelling out some chaos."
